NOTES ON ELECTION 20/20: A LOOK THROUGH CORRECTIVE LENSES (PART TWO)
INTRODUCTION
The events surrounding the Presidential Election of 2020 have provoked all types of sentiments among the voting and non-voting public in America, from relief to astonishment to outrage to alarm, with such emotions roiled from day to day, even hour to hour. In 2020, interest was higher-than-average, with a full 62% of the voting-age eligible population voting, an increase of nearly seven percentage points from the corresponding 2016 figure. This look at some of the significant and subtle findings that illuminate and occasionally confound important themes builds upon the facts and figures in Part One of this brief.
In my view, the Politics of Engagement that allowed for many possibilities of cooperation between political parties in previous decades has been eclipsed by a Politics of Estrangement and even Derangement, where opponents are simpletons, dupes, brainwashed and brain-damaged and even hostile, treasonous enemies of the country and its upstanding citizens. Such a poisoned politics, by definition volatile, vicious and prone to subterfuge and camouflage in tactics and strategies, cannot continue without fraying and ultimately failing the body politic.
It remains to be seen whether change will come in spasms of unrest or more sustained culture clashes, and whether such events can be steered by the politicians who aid and abet such workings, or whether they become sidelined observers of upheavals that could alter longstanding practices and principles at the heart of American life and society.
- THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION--CHANGE NO CHANGE
In part because the Presidency was won by the Democratic candidate over the Republican incumbent, and the levels of engagement and voting were so high in 2020, we tend to ascribe momentous shifts to the reading of the results. However, such a view indulges in overreach. This was a static election, with Joe Biden being both lucky and good in the way he ran his campaign and how and where the votes fell (see Part One for more on this).
Of the major party vote, Joe Biden won only 0.8 percentage points more than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 (although in Biden's case that also included over 15 million more total votes than Clinton). Similarly, only 10% of the states in the nation "flipped" from 2016 (all in Biden's favor). Never in the history of Presidential Elections has there been a change of party in the White House where fewer states "flipped" from one party to another than was the case in 2020.
Similarly, in these five states where Trump won in 2016 and Biden was the victor in 2020, the percentages of the two-party vote in general moved very little. Georgia showed the most movement, with Biden besting Clinton's vote percentage by 2.8 percentage points (from 47.3% to 50.1%). Changing demographics, Stacy Abrams' get-out-the-vote campaign for the Democrats and competitive Senate races all probably played important roles in the swing to Biden. There was also a swing of 2.0 percentage points in Arizona; this was a state where in 2016 non-two party Presidential candidates took 7.4% of the vote. The relatively weak showing of these types of candidates in 2020 probably aided Biden more than Trump.
In the three midwestern states (PA, MI, WI), that Trump won for the Republicans for the first time in 2016 since back in the 1980s, the two-party victory margins were much thinner. Biden won 51.4% of the vote in Michigan, 50.5% in Pennsylvania and 50.3% in Wisconsin. If Trump had won the Keystone State, and any two of the other four states that in fact flipped, he would have been reelected, with an extremely narrow Electoral College victory and a seven million popular vote loss. Such a result certainly would have led to more voices being raised about the need to abolish the Electoral College and the skewed outcomes being produced.
Static states that are becoming a deeper hue of Red and Blue is a topic I'll be discussing, but looking at behaviors and demographics as captured by 2020 exit polls presents stark portraits of Presidential voting. For example, 2020 was the first election in memory where how one voted was weaponized and seeded with doubt about legitimacy by a party and its leader months before Election Day arrived. In part due to pandemic realities, and in part due to broadcast instructions to Republican voters to reject the mail-in voting method for themselves and look askance when Democrats embraced it, the vote by mail option effectively split the voting populace and Balkanized the issue:
Joe Biden was clearly the candidate of young America, with voters under 30 voting for him by a greater than 3 to 2 margin. Of course, young America is also the most multicultural age segment of America, and as American voters age, a greater proportion in this segment are white. These voters are more likely to cast ballots for Republican candidates, although in the Edison Exit Poll Biden never received fewer than 47% of the vote from any age segment:
It is perhaps within the education level grouping that the most dramatic cleavage within a broad demographic group is found. White voters without college degrees went for Trump in 2020 by a 2 to 1 margin, while college-educated whites slightly favored Biden.
However, this circumstance should not be thought of as a new phenomenon, although the gap has become a chasm since Donald Trump arrived on the Presidential scene. For example, non-college white voters were a trouble spot for Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008. The group accounted for nearly four in ten voters in the 2008 election, and Obama lost them by 18 percentage points to Senator John McCain. According to exit polls from that year, he lost by only four points among whites with college diplomas. And Obama in '08 even outperformed Senator John Kerry’s 23-point loss to George W. Bush among this group in 2004. Bill Clinton was the last Democrat to match Republicans in support among this group, doing it in both 1992 and 1996.
And Hillary Clinton in 2016 did even more poorly than Joe Biden among the white, no college voting segment, earning only 28% of their votes, compared to Trump's 67%. Among white voters in general, Clinton had a severe perceived "honesty deficit" that helped to neutralize Trump's own liabilities in this area:
And in the same election year, where these voters made up more of the population correlated fairly strongly with Republican-won or highly competitive states, as seen on the map below:
Because these voters still made up one-third of voters in 2020, any Democratic candidate that only obtains 32% of their overall vote, as Biden did, has to do extremely well with other groups among the electorate. Biden was able to do that, but if the less-educated white voter remains deposited in the Republican camp post-Trump, they will represent a strong base for that party to build off of.
Going forward, the answers to the following questions are important for determining both major parties' prospects during the next cycles of Presidential politics:
1) Is the white working-class voter now lost to the Democratic party, or is their solid placement in the Republican camp a function of Trumpism, and thus a temporary phenomenon? Perhaps more importantly, do the Democrats want parts of this group back into their coalition, as the internal tensions that might become apparent could make them more a general liability than an asset.
2) Hispanics, who are the fastest-growing voting bloc in America, were strong backers of Biden, but where niche groups were not (such as Cuban-Americans in Florida), they played an outsized role in helping Trump score state-based Electoral College victories. While not monolithic, politicians often treat them as such. Which party will be more successful at devising a strategy to capture more of these voters in the decade ahead?
3) Getting out the vote is always of vital importance, and the Politics of Hope and the Politics of Alarm often are strong motivators in getting people to the polls. In the America of the '20s, which polarity will be ascendant, and which political party can take better advantage of this?
2. BRUISED PURPLE
There is a widespread sentiment in America that the majority of U.S. citizens are generally moderates when it comes to the social, cultural and economic policies that they favor. Such a view says that the extremism, partisan divides and furious disagreements between Republicans and Democrats, left and right, progressives and conservatives, urban and non-urban dwellers and other societal groups can be bridged by enlightened politicians and policies. That may be the case, but relatively recent changes point to a sharpening of political differences that make membership on and loyalty to "Team Red" or "Team Blue" more solidified than ever.
Here is one fascinating example to consider. As of 2020, more than 80% of the states (41 of 50) have either 2 Republican or 2 Democratic Senators. Just a decade ago, in 2010, just 31 of the 50 states were in that camp; 19 were "purple." And when one looks at the 2020 election and the Senators from each state, of the 18 states with two Democratic Senators, all 18 of those states voted for Joe Biden. And of the 23 states that had two Republican Senators at the time of the election, Trump won 22 of them. And the one state he didn't win constituted the purest flip in 2020. It was Georgia, the state that became Democratic at the Senatorial and Presidential level in the recent elections.
2010 Senate Map: Red-(R); Blue (D); Purple-1D/1R; Stripe connotes 1 Independent
As a particular telling of how things have changed in this respect in America, take the central core of states in the Midwest and Southern parts of the U.S.--the thirteen states ranging from North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin at the top to Texas and Louisiana at the bottom. In 2010, 10 of those 13 states had a "purple" Senate composition, electing one Democrat and one Republican to that chamber. But ten years later, in 2020, the recent election shows exactly one "purple" state in this regard, Wisconsin. Times have changed...
3. YOUR FACTS ARE MY FICTIONS, AND VICE VERSA
It is one thing for people to debate and decide where their political loyalties lie with friends, relatives, neighbors and even strangers. However, when citizens are constructing and guided by separate realities, where such terms as "truthiness," "alternative facts," "false flags," "fake news" and "unreality" are commonly discussed and even embraced, something fundamental in our country has changed.
I'll save the discussion of the possible antecedents for another time, but I do want to posit the increasing importance of an alternative view that includes the elements of both the real and unreal (or "fake"). That would be the surreal, defined as "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream." From the recent Capitol Cosplay Caravan to the most unconventional President in recent American history; from an economy hailed as the greatest one in the entire history of mankind to one driven to the ground in the space of weeks--it has been hard to make sense of America during the past several years, and that difficulty has only seemed to have accelerated. For an economy said to be in shambles, what of a stock market setting new records? From fears of crime and violence hitting highs, what of the facts of the lowest crime rates in a generation? In a country seen by some as morally and spiritually bankrupt, what of plummeting abortion rates, growth in new places of worship and volunteer time dollar value hitting an all time high?
The United States, of course, is not the only country wrestling with deepening political divides. Populism, authoritarianism and related ideologies have disrupted and reordered political systems from the U.K. to Brazil. The expansiveness of technology, the shrinking of the globe (and concomitant global-level concerns and crises), aging societies and deepening inequality all present challenges that don't lend themselves to simplistic answers or turning away from the realities of situations. But in the United States it's become increasingly difficult for voters of different stripes to actually agree that certain things are problems, or that they are or aren't being successfully addressed.
The two major issues that concerned the U.S. public in 2020 were Covid-19 and the state of the economy. Take for example, the coronavirus pandemic. In early 2020, the U.S. public was more satisfied than not with President Trump's handling of the situation. But once deaths in the country from the virus reached 10,000 in April, the majority of the public became dissatisfied with Trump's handling of the situation. This remained constant throughout the remainder of his Presidential term. When he left office in January of this year, about 3 in 5 (58%) Americans were dissatisfied with his performance in this area. But this masked a yawning perception gap between Republicans and Democrats--throughout the last nine months of 2020, about 3 in 4 Republicans were satisfied with Trump's coronavirus performance, while less than 1 in 10 Democrats felt similarly.
Source: FiveThirtyEight
One could be excused if they believed that Republicans and Democrats were evaluating and expressing confidence in the economies of two different sovereign countries. It truly appears that party affiliation precludes the usage of any type of wide-angle lens in looking at the state of things--blinders and filters seem to be what is utilized in nearly all areas.
When looking at reasons for such stark cleavages, the Pew Center wrote some insightful analysis a few months ago that I quote at length below:
The polarizing pressures of partisan media, social media, and even deeply rooted cultural, historical and regional divides are hardly unique to America. By comparison, America’s relatively rigid, two-party electoral system stands apart by collapsing a wide range of legitimate social and political debates into a singular battle line that can make our differences appear even larger than they may actually be. And when the balance of support for these political parties is close enough for either to gain near-term electoral advantage – as it has in the U.S. for more than a quarter century – the competition becomes cutthroat and politics begins to feel zero-sum, where one side’s gain is inherently the other’s loss. Finding common cause – even to fight a common enemy in the public health and economic threat posed by the coronavirus – has eluded us.
And there is a paradox at the heart of the divide in the body politic--idealism consistently battered by the headwinds of cynicism. Both Biden and Trump supporters a couple of months before the 2020 Presidential election were united at the 90 percent agreement level in the belief that the election of their preferred candidate's opponent would not just be troublesome to the U.S., but that it would be profoundly toxic and lead to lasting harm for the country.
The idealism comes from a na?ve belief, perhaps, that a victorious candidate should in fact address the concerns of all Americans, not just his supporters, upon winning the office. Among the vanquished, if the other team's man was elected, the fear was it would be calamitous, but that President should be magnanimous in reaching out--Joe Biden built a campaign around such a principle. We'll see if there's any adhesion possible, or if the policy differences are just too far apart to find common or even contested ground in the America of today.
